10 Ways to Use Social Media

We live in the age of social media. It keeps us connected to our friends and families, our communities, and even the world. As educators, we need to take advantage of everything this tool has to offer, using educational connections and resources to better not only ourselves, but our students as well. So how can we best use this mighty tool?

With social media at our fingertips, we can:

• Connect with experts: Twitter can provide many professional development resource opportunities for teachers and administrators. Some ways that you can use Twitter as an educational resource include:
  1. Using hashtags for common educational keywords and discussions
  2. Providing new teachers with mentoring and coaching opportunities
  3. Tweeting your students to review lessons or engage them with open-ended questions
  4. Creating collaborative projects with other classes from around the world (collaborative storytelling)
     
     
• Conduct peer-to-peer sharing: Social media provides students with the opportunity to create and share their work. Encourage your students to share globally, and seek out ways to connect with other classes in order to collaborate and gain feedback on student projects.
  
  
• Reach out to a global community: Enhance your network by joining groups and blogs such as Google Communities, EdWeb, Edmodo, Educator’s PLN, and The Connected Principals.
  
  
• Endorse a parent/student communication toolbox: Provide opportunities for parents and students to connect with you using technology they already are comfortable with. Programs like remind.com provides a platform to communicate class information, reminders of upcoming due dates, and other pertinent class information.
  
  
• Reach out to mentor connections: Using programs such as Google+, students can connect with experts in any field. For example, engineering students can connect with key experts working in their chosen field, while journalism students can connect with newspaper publishers.
  
  
• Host digital meetings: Create a live PTO meeting for parents who cannot attend via Google Hangouts on air. For those with tricky schedules, recordings are saved as a YouTube video for convenient viewing. You can even post important documents and a school calendar of PTO events in a Google group.
  
  
• Stay connected with QR codes: Produce and use QR codes around the school and community that link to important documents for parents, school information, and student work you want to showcase.
  
  
• Get organized: Organize all of your favorite blogs, websites, and educational content in one place using a site such as Feedly. You can access your favorites from Feedly on all of your devices—your phone, tablet, and computer will all be in sync.
  
  
• Use technology tools more effectively: Need help with a Mimio lesson? A Google Cardboard activity? Ideas for Chromebooks in education? Many educational companies have websites, groups, communities, YouTube channels, and other social media tools to connect you to educational experts.
  
  
• Express yourself: As you become more knowledgeable in educational topics, it would be a good time to share your expertise and knowledge with other educators. Do you have an engaging lesson that worked well with your students? Find a great resource for project-based learning? Share these as a tweet, a blog post, or a link from a group. Create a space where you can share your work, your ideas, and your thoughts for the world to see—you just might become the next person that is followed, tagged, or linked to by other educators!

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